Authors: C. S. Forester
Tags: #Inquisition, #treasure, #Caribbean, #Indian islands, #Indians, #aristocrats, #Conquistadors, #Orinoco, #Haiti, #Spain, #natives
“Perhaps not. But after dark there may be a wind off the land which would help us. There usually is.”
“Did the Admiral say so?”
“No.”
Rich could not explain that he had learned about land and sea breezes by night and day from simple observations while fishing in the Barcelona roadstead.
“But how will a wind off the land help us to reach the land?” asked Avila; his contorted features showed how hard he was trying to think.
“We shall have it on our beam and can get well to windward of San Domingo tonight, so that in the morning we can go straight in with the first of the sea breeze,” said Rich.
“You’re as good a pilot as the Admiral, Don Narciso,” said García, looking at him curiously.
“Not a bit of it,” said Rich.
“At least it is not
your
fault that we have arrived the wrong side of San Domingo,” put in Acevedo. Rich rounded on him.
“You don’t appreciate what a marvelous navigator the Admiral is,” he said. “There is no other sailor living who could have brought the squadron so directly here. That is true, believe me. With ordinary piloting we might have been a hundred leagues away instead of five.”
“You must never say a word against the Admiral in Don Narciso’s presence,” said García, half bantering and half serious; perhaps he was remembering the occasion when Rich had conscientiously reported the acquisition of treasure.
“Hullo, we’re chasing our tails again,” said Tarpia.
The ship was going about again and standing in to the shore, and Rich was for a moment puzzled as to the motive for this maneuver. But he guessed it when he saw the Admiral looking keenly shorewards and followed his gaze.
“There’s a canoe coming out to us,” he said.
There it was, a dark spot bobbing on the waves; the sinking sun lit up a white speck in motion on it — somebody was waving to the ships from it:
“We’ll get news of our friends now!” exclaimed Tarpia, eagerly.
Everybody rushed to the side of the ship and watched the canoe as it danced over the glittering water towards them. It was an Indian who paddled it, but not a naked one. He wore a shirt of coarse towcloth, as everyone could see when he scrambled up the side, but it was not that which specially caught Rich’s notice — and the Admiral’s notice, too. In his hand he carried a crossbow; it was rusted, and the cord was frayed, and the winding handle was bent lopsided, but it was a crossbow for all that, and in the Indian’s belt of creeper was a single bolt. Before the Indian, blinking round at the ring of Spaniards, had time to collect himself, the Admiral was demanding where he had obtained the weapon. The seriousness of the island natives’ possessing such weapons of precision was apparent to all.
“Loldan gave it me,” said the Indian; he could speak Spanish after a fashion.
“Roldan!” exclaimed the Admiral. “The Alcalde Mayor?”
“Yes. We friends,” said the Indian proudly. “I shoot bad Indians. Christian, I am.”
He bent his head and made the sign of the cross, and intoned something in a weird sing-song, which was just recognizable as the Pater Noster. Some of the group round him laughed, as they might at the antics of a performing ape.
“Where is my brother, His Excellency the
Adelantado
?” asked the Admiral.
“In the town,” said the Indian, pointing down the coast with an appearance of indifference. “He not Loldan’s friend.”
“Not Roldan’s friend?” repeated the Admiral, blankly.
“No. He fight. Loldan fight. Indian fight.”
The Indian grinned a simpleton’s grin. A gesture more eloquent than his bad Spanish called up a picture of bloody confusion throughout the island. Someone in the background whistled in amazement at his words.
“But why?
Why
?” groaned the Admiral. The Indian grinned again, and tried to explain. There was no sense in his words. Spanish quarrels meant nothing to him. Rich suspected him of being mentally subnormal, even when allowance was made for the difficulties of language.
At least the Admiral was prepared to waste no more time on him.
“Take that crossbow away from him,” he ordered, curtly; “Put him over the side. Captain, lay the ship on the other tack.”
This was decision, activity. Only a few seconds were necessary to bundle the protesting Indian back into his canoe and to begin to claw seaward again away from the lee shore. Rich admired the Admiral as he stood on the high poop rapping out his orders. Firmness and decision of this sort would soon stamp out any disloyalty when they reached San Domingo.
The wind blew briskly past them as the
Holy Name
ploughed along, lying as close to the wind as she could; it set Rich’s clothes flapping and blew the Admiral’s white hair out in horizontal streamers as he stood staring forward. If intensity of desire could carry the
Holy Name
, the clumsy ship would fly, thought Rich, watching the Admiral’s face. The Admiral did not take his eyes from the ship’s course as he began to speak.
“It was bad news that Indian bore, Don Narciso,” he said.
“We know nothing of the truth of the matter yet, Your Excellency.”
“No. I find it hard to believe that Roldan would oppose himself to my brother, the
Adelantodo
whom I myself appointed.”
“Who is this Roldan, Your Excellency?”
“The Alcalde Mayor — the Chief Magistrate. He owes that position to me.”
“Naturally,” said Rich. There was no appointment in the Indies which was not in the Admiral’s direct gift. “But who is he, Your Excellency? I do not know the name. Is he a gentleman? What rank did he hold before this appointment?”
“He was my servant,” said the Admiral. “But I thought he was honest. I thought he was loyal. I thought — ”
The Admiral checked himself with a sigh.
“Perhaps he is,” said Rich, with cheerful optimism. “We cannot condemn him without knowing the facts.”
“If he has been fighting my brother he must be disloyal,” said the Admiral, conclusively. Rich was not so sure; it may have been mere professional sympathy, but he felt that a Chief Justice might easily find himself at odds with a Columbus and still have right on his side.
“Is he learned in the law, Your Excellency?” he asked. “As I said, I am not acquainted with his name.”
“Of course he is not,” said the Admiral, petulantly. “Did I not say he was my servant? He was my body servant, my valet.”
After that, Rich felt there was nothing more to be said. A Chief Justice who had been a valet would certainly be as great a source of trouble as any Columbus. Rich could only gaze forward as anxiously as the Admiral himself, wondering what would be the situation he would find awaiting him when at last he reached San Domingo.
They entered the river mouth in the late afternoon, after two weary days of beating against head winds. The Spaniards on board were pleased and excited at the thought that at last their voyaging was really at an end, and at the prospect of seeing new white faces. The details grew clearer under their eager gaze as the sea breeze pushed them briskly into the inlet; there was the wooden church with its square tower, and beside it the fort — only the simplest arrangement of ditch, palisade, and parapet, but quite impregnable to the simple unarmed folk who were its only possible assailants. At the Admiral’s order the
Holy Name
swung round the point of the shoal and headed across to the anchorage where there was deep water up to the foot of the church. Close on their left hand opened up a clearing in the wild tangle of trees that came down to the water’s edge, and there, starkly visible to all the interior, stood a gallows, from which dangled two corpses.
“Holy Mary!” said Moret, with genuine sincerity. “It is good to be in a Christian country again!”
He pointed to the gallows.
“Are they Indians or Spaniards?” asked García, shading his eyes with his hands, but no one could answer that question. Rich read a moral lesson in the fact that death and putrefaction made the European indistinguishable from the Indian.
Cannon thundered with wreaths of white smoke from the citadel in salute to the Admiral’s flag; the Admiral was standing proudly on the poop looking across at his town; armor winked and glittered in the setting sun over the citadel walls. A small crowd of people were already launching boats and canoes to come out and welcome them.
The leading boat was distinguished by a flag held up the bows, displaying the Admiral’s arms within a white bordure to indicate the presence of the Admiral’s deputy, the
Adelantado
. Bartholomew Columbus, when he came on board, looked round him with piercing blue eyes which at first glance him a striking resemblance to his brother, but he was more heavily built — a stoop-shouldered, burly man whose dense beard did not disguise the heavy jaw and the thick lips. An Indian woman mounted next after him; there were pearls in her ears, round her neck, and in her long loose hair. She was cloaked in blue velvet, but she made no effort to keep the cloak about her to conceal the slender naked body beneath. She was smiling and chattering excitedly, white teeth flashing, with her hand laid on the
Adelantado’s
arm. Not even the harsh contrast between the blue velvet and her nudity could mar her beauty.
The brothers kissed, under the gaze of every eye in the ship; the Admiral had a brief word for the woman before he received the bows of the
Adelantado’s
escort. Rich watched the little ceremony keenly from a distance, anxious to form his opinion of the
Adelantado
— the latter’s undoubted influence with the Admiral would count for so much in the future of the New World. He saw Bartholomew pluck at Christopher’s sleeve; he pointed ashore and glanced anxiously at the sun — clearly there was work to be done ashore that demanded the Admiral’s immediate attention. The Admiral nodded distractedly; Carvajal and Osorio and Tarpia were all asking for his attention, and the decks were crowded with people from the shore, so that there was hardly room to stand. The din and bustle were tremendous. Carvajal wanted instructions regarding the ship and crew, Osorio regarding the stores, Tarpia permission to take his soldiers ashore. Each had a brief unsatisfactory word in reply, and continually Bartholomew plucked at the Admiral’s sleeve and begged him to come ashore.
“Yes,” said the Admiral, “I will come. One moment — ”
He caught Rich’s eye and beckoned to him.
“Bartholomew, I want to present the learned Don Narciso Rich. Their Highnesses have lent me his services to help on the legal side of the administration.”
“A lawyer, eh?” said the
Adelantado
, turning a coldly belligerent eye upon him.
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“We need men of action more than men of law.”
“I expect so, Your Excellency. But I am here at Their Highnesses’ express command.”
That scored the first point for Rich; he had no intention of being browbeaten, and though his reply was in a humble tone it made a clear statement of the strength of his position. As long as no one knew that his mission was to find a means of curtailing the Admiral’s cherished power, he would have all the prestige of a court favorite and there would be no reason for anyone to dislike him. He was a long way from home, and he wished to see Barcelona again.
“It is as a man of law that I welcome Don Narciso here,” interposed the Admiral. “What you have told me about what you want to do this afternoon — ”
“I will have no interference in that,” said Bartholomew, loudly.
The tall Dominican friar at his shoulder broke into the conversation.
“Indeed not. The Crown itself — Queen Isabella in person — could not interfere there. The Holy See long ago decided that matter. The secular arm has only to do its duty after the Church has reached its decision.”
“I beg your pardon, but I do not understand,” said Rich.
“What is the point at issue?”
“It is not at issue,” said Bartholomew, loudly. “Brother, please come. Soon night will fall and make an excuse for the Indians to steal away. It has been hard enough assembling them.”
“Come with me, Don Narciso,” said the Admiral, hastily.
The boat in which they rowed to shore was loaded to the water’s edge — it had been full enough on its way to the ship, but now it held the Admiral and his squire and Rich in addition. Rich was crowded in the bow, wedged so tight that he could not even turn his head to see the approaching shore as the boat moved sluggishly over the little waves, so different from the big rollers outside. He could make a guess at the point under consideration — some heretic had been detected and was about to make solemn recantation. He would lose his goods and would vanish into the dungeons of the Inquisition. Certainly it was a matter in which he could not interfere, nor would he if he could.
The boat took the ground with a jerk — it was strange that no pier had as yet been built — and Rich swung himself, with the others, over the side. He might perhaps have stayed and kept his feet dry, as did the Admiral and the
Adelantado
and the Dominican, but he judged that it might be better if he remained inconspicuous. He splashed ashore — the Indian woman, her cloak held high, beside him. She gabbled something to him, hastily.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
The queer Spanish which she spoke suddenly took shape as she repeated herself.
“Save them, sir. Please try to save them.”
There was a frightful anxiety in her face as she spoke — her features were working with the stress of her emotion.
“I will try,” said Rich, cautiously, and puzzled.
“Try. Speak to
him
. Speak to the Admiral.”
Next moment her face had resumed its earlier animated interest, and she was smiling at the
Adelantado
as he stepped out of the boat.
“This is where the pier will be built,” said the
Adelantado
to his brother.
“I expected to find it built already,” said the Admiral in a tone of mild expostulation.
“It would have been, if the lazy dogs of Indians would only work. But they would sooner die. I have seen them die under my very eyes, in the quarries, sooner than labor. It was all I could do to get in the quotas of gold and cotton and build the church and the citadel. We put a hundred corpses a week into the sea, even before the present troubles began.”